The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. One area in which there is a demand to increase the ease of information transfer and convenience to users relates to provision of information sharing in various networks. Although there are numerous types of networks that may be utilized for sharing information, it is becoming more popular recently to share information via decentralized networks. A decentralized network may generally be considered a network that operates in a distributed environment rather than a centralized control environment. Thus, network resources such as processors, memory, switching devices, etc., may be distributed throughout the network instead of being centralized at one location (e.g., a server or server bank). As such, for example, various devices may come and go from the network at random times. A peer-to-peer (P2P) network is one example of a decentralized network. P2P networks rely primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the devices or nodes (i.e., peers) within the network. Accordingly, P2P networks generally do not concentrate computing power and bandwidth within servers.
Each device is typically able to host a representation of, for example, its own capabilities as a hierarchical structure (e.g., as an inverted tree structure rooted at a single node). In a typical decentralized network, a user associated with a device entering the network may wish to make a service supported by the device available via the network. Alternatively, the user may wish to discover services that are available via the network. An environment in which devices are easily able to enter and leave the network with little configuration is sometimes known as a “smart space”. In a smart space, users may enter into an environment and join the network to share or use resources without significant configuration set up overhead that requires extensive user involvement. As such, for example, in a multi-device scenario in which two or more devices are brought into communication with each other, certain information related to device capabilities and/or applications running on each respective device (e.g., the hierarchical structure representing the capabilities of each respective device) may be merged into a logical composite tree that may be shared amongst the devices. The information shared may include security policy or profile, capabilities, or the like. However, such a composite tree typically does not take into account changes in context or state of each of the devices.
Given the ubiquitous nature of mobile terminals, such as mobile phones and numerous other mobile electronic devices, network communications (including communication in both centralized and decentralized networks) are becoming more common. As such, smart spaces and other similar environments are becoming desirable for enhancing user experiences.